As rivers fall, Northeast cleans up

Thursday

Sep 1, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 1, 2011 at 11:23 AM

Swollen rivers began falling yesterday in much of the Northeast, allowing relief crews to reach the last of the tiny Vermont towns that had been cut off entirely from help by Hurricane Irene's fast-moving floodwaters.

Swollen rivers began falling yesterday in much of the Northeast, allowing relief crews to reach the last of the tiny Vermont towns that had been cut off entirely from help by Hurricane Irene’s fast-moving floodwaters.

The receding water eased the flooding that had paralyzed parts of the region and revealed more damage to homes, farms and businesses across the flood-scarred landscape.

Estimates indicated that the storm almost certainly would rank among the nation’s costliest natural disasters.

Of the 11 towns that had been severed from the outside world, the final one to be reached by rescuers was Wardsboro, a village of 850 in the Green Mountains. The community is little more than a post office and some houses standing along Rt.?100, a highway popular in the fall with tourists searching out autumn colors.

The National Guard continued to ferry supplies to mountain towns that had no electricity, no telephone service and limited transportation in or out. Eight helicopters were arriving yesterday with food, blankets, tarps and drinking water.

In the ski resort town of Killington, residents came to the elementary school for free hot dogs and corn on the cob. Jason and Angela Heaslip picked up a bag filled with peanut butter, cereal and toilet paper for their three children and three visitors from Long Island.

“Right now, they’re getting little portions because we’re trying to make the food last,” said Jason Heaslip, who has only $1 in his bank account because the storm has kept him from getting paid by the resort where he works.

Don Fielder, a house painter in Gaysville, said the White River roared through his house, tearing the first floor off the foundation and filling a bathroom tub with mud. He was upbeat as he showed a visitor the damage, but said he’s reluctant to go into town for fear he will cry when people ask about the home he built himself 16 years ago.

Other losses include a 1957 Baldwin piano and a collection of 300 Beanie Babies amassed by his daughter, who does not live with him but has a bedroom at his house.

If Irene’s death toll stands at 45, it would be comparable to 1999’s Hurricane Floyd, which also struck North Carolina and charged up the East Coast into New England, causing most of its 57 deaths by inland drowning. At the time, it was the deadliest U.S. hurricane in nearly 40 years but later was dwarfed by the 1,800 deaths caused by Katrina in 2005.

An estimate released immediately after Irene by the Kinetic Analysis Corp., a consulting firm that uses computer models to project storm losses, put the damage at $7.2 billion in eight states and Washington, D.C.

That would eclipse damage from Hurricane Bob, which caused $1 billion in damage in New England in 1991 or the equivalent of about $1.7?billion today.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo estimated the damage to his state alone at $1?billion during a visit to Prattsville, a community in the Catskill Mountains where 600 homes were damaged.

Power outages persisted across the region, with some of the most widespread in Connecticut, where more than 360,000 homes and businesses were in the dark, and Virginia, where 242,000 customers had no lights.

In North Carolina, where Irene blew ashore, Gov. Beverly Perdue said the hurricane destroyed more than 1,100 homes.

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